There has been mixed evidence regarding the existence of rational bubbles in the foreign exchange markets. This paper introduces recently developed sequential unit root tests into the analysis of exchange rates bubbles. We find strong evidence of explosive behavior in the nominal Sterling-dollar...

This paper employs a Markov regime-switching approach to investigate whether the Great Moderation is over since the start of the late 2000s recession. The results confirm that the recent financial crisis did cause a simultaneous high-volatility period among the G7 countries. However, the...

This paper investigates to what extent the fundamentals of the real economy are reflected in the stock prices of Japan. A Markov switching VAR model with switching variances is used to test the structural identification scheme. Identification of fundamental and nonfundamental shocks is shown to...

This paper introduces a Divisia monetary aggregate for Germany and explores its information content for the Great Recession. Divisia money and the corresponding simple sum aggregate are highly correlated in normal times but begin to diverge before the crisis. Out of sample forecast analysis and...

Numerous papers have tried to understand housing’s role in the economy and have not reached an agreement. In this paper we turn to the asymmetric relationship between housing and the overall economic activity. We find that the relation between building permits and GDP is regime-dependent....

Long run neutrality restrictions have been widely used to identify structural shocks in VAR models. This paper revisits the seminal paper by Blanchard and Quah (1989), and investigates their identification scheme. We use structural VAR models with smoothly changing covariances for identification...